With full as many signs of deadly hate, As lean-fac'd envy in her loathsome cave: My tongue should stumble in mine earnest words; And boding screech-owls make the concert full! Gerarde says that the cypress tree, in times past, was said to be deadly, whereupon it is thought that the shadow thereof is unfortunate.' Bishop Hall has the following lines on this dark and sombre tree, considering it as the emblem of grief : Bind you my brows with mourning cyparesse And palish twigs of deadly poplar tree, Or if some sadder shades you can devise Those sadder shades veiling my light loathing eyes. Some of our early writers speak of the cypress as fatal, dismal, baleful, mournful, sable, sad, fune reous. In Spencer's 'Shepherd's Calendar' (November) are the following lines: The water nymphs, that wont with her to sing and dance Now baleful boughs of cypress do e'n advance. Quarles, in ‘Argalus and Parthenia,' date 1628, Book iii., has——— With branches slipt from the sad cypress tree. Yew (Taxus baccata, common jew). The only British species, an evergreen remarkable for its longevity, is found in most of the churchyards in England, and generally associated with the grave. It has from time immemorial been used to deck the coffins of the dead and also the shroud. The learned naturalist, John Ray, says: 'Our ancestors planted the yew in churchyards because it was an evergreen tree, as a symbol of that immortality which they hoped and expected for the persons therein deposited. For the same reason branches of yew are still carried at funerals and thrown into the grave.' Evelyn, in his 'Sylva,' notices the same fact. A song in Beaumont and Fletcher's Maid's Tragedy, 1619, says :— Lay a garland on my hearse, Of the dismal yew. In Thomas Shirley's poems, 1651, p. 54, we read : grave Yet strew upon my dismal Or growth from such unhappy earth. In the Marrow of Compliments, 1655, is a maiden's song for her dead lover, in which cypress and yew are noticed as funeral plants. Shakspere, in Richard II. Act iii. Scene 2, speaks of bows of double fatal yew,' the leaves being poisonous, and the wood having been used as instruments in war. In Macbeth, Act iv. Scene 1, he introduces slips of yew, with other poisonous ingredients, for the witches' cauldron. In Titus Andronicus, Act ii. Scene 3, Tamora, the queen, says: They would bind me here, unto the body of a dismal yew, and leave me to this miserable death. Columella notices' yew as a plant whence deadly poison comes.' Bartholomæus, Book xvii. chap. 161, says: 'Yew is a tree of venym and poyson, the shadow thereof is grevous and sleth such as sleep thereunder.' Gerarde notices the same facts and refers to the works of Galen, Dioscorides, and Nicander. As the burial referred to in the song of the Clown, called by the Duke old and plain, was one of darkness and solitude, without friends or flowers, we see how appropriate are the emblems selected by Shakspere the black coffin, the sad cypress, and the fatal yew-all in contrast to the flowers which adorned the graves of Juliet and Fidele, and also to such as Katherine, the Queen of Henry VIII., desired: When I am dead, good wench, Let me be used with honour, strew me over With maiden flowers, that all the world may know CHAPTER XII. A WINTER'S TALE.* HE plants named in this play are Daffodils (Narcissus Pseudo-narcissus), Saffron (Crocus sativus), Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis), Rue (Ruta graveolens), Lavender, Mint, Savory, Marjoram, Marigold (Chrysanthemum segetum), Pale primrose (Primula vulgaris), Carnations, Gillivors. In Act iv. Scene 2, Autolycus enters singing : When daffodils begin to peer With heigh the doxy over the dale— Why then comes in the sweet o' the year, The common Daffodil (Lent lily, Narcissus Pseudo-narcissus) grows in woods, orchards and meadows. It has large showy yellow flowers, and appears early in Spring. In Scene iii. of the same * First printed in folio of 1623. |